


spark

by hydrospanners



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Red Crossing, some inquisitorial musings on love and responsibility
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-18 17:07:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14217774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydrospanners/pseuds/hydrospanners
Summary: The Inquisition learns the truth of what happened at Red Crossing and the events that sparked the fall of the Dales. Niria Adaar takes the whole thing a little personally.





	spark

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr. Written for Fictober 2016.

What damage a heart could cause.

Tens of thousands of trees grow in the Graves. Tens of thousands of oaks and ashes, of hawthorns and elms, of firs and pines and cedars. Tens of thousands of ghosts, monuments to the price that was paid for love.

Ria flexes her scarred hand, trying to think of anything but that damned song.

 _Too long have I traveled, soon I’ll see her smiling,_  
The girl in Red Crossing I’m longing to see.  
O, I know she is there, daisies in her hair,  
Waiting by the chantry to marry me.

There’s a peculiar sort of gloom that always seems to follow a night at the tavern. The later the hour the more merriment turns to melancholy. Bawdy tunes grow wistful. Laughter fades to longing sighs. Someone will start the weeping and it's never long after that before someone else starts slurring the nonsense that passes as poetry to drunks. And eventually, someone will sing that damned song.

If Ria never hears it again, it will be too fucking soon.

Varric called it a tragedy. The little bastard loves to throw that word around. Nothing he loves more than a good tragedy.

Ria doesn’t think he knows what a tragedy is.

Tragedy is a babe left out in the cold because their parents can’t afford another mouth. It’s a perfectly treatable sickness wiping out half a slum because no one cares enough to send a healer. It’s a failed crop that sends half a village to their pyres. It’s a desperate man flooding his own town to save it.

There’s nothing poignant or romantic about tragedy. It’s just bad shit that happens. Sometimes because people are assholes, sometimes for no reason at all. It’s not beautiful. It’s not bittersweet. It’s bad and it’s shit.

What happened in the Dales is tragic. The tens of thousands of trees, the Exalted Plains, every alienage in every city in Thedas—All of those things are tragic.

But Red Crossing? The romance of Elandrin and Adalene? That’s not tragedy. That’s selfishness.

Maybe she’s being hard on them. Maybe what happened was always going to happen. Maybe it was destiny. Maybe it was divine will. Maybe allowances ought to be made for the young and in love.

Maybe, two people standing on a mountain of tinder ought to know better than to strike a spark.

The truth is this: carelessness can kill just as easily as malice. A person doesn’t have to be cruel to be evil; they only need to be selfish.

It’s a truth Ria learned early, when she first woke from nightmares with whispers of promise in her ear. It’s a truth every mage knows, a truth she’s never been able to forget. A truth that now hangs over her head like the blade of a headsman’s axe.

If Elandrin and Adalene stood atop a mountain of tinder, then Ria is drowning in an ocean of oil. It isn’t just the Chantry and the elves now. It isn’t just Orlais and the Dales, Val Royeaux and Halamshiral. All of Thedas teeters on the edge of a knife, and somehow that knife has found its way to Ria’s hand.

She opens her palm and examines the cluster of scars there, feels the tingle of magic beneath them. She thinks of her brother, of his embroidered robes and inkstained fingers, of the breathless way he reads all of Varric’s stories. She thinks of the furrow in his brow when he concentrates, of the way he giggles when she tickles his ribs. She thinks of his heart and how often his generosity surpasses his good sense.

She thinks of Therinfal Redoubt and the future she saw there. She thinks of Celene and Gaspard and Briala. She thinks of a great, flaming throne and the people who kneel before it.

Elandrin and Adalene let Orlais burn for their love. Ria has to wonder, what will she sacrifice for hers?


End file.
